Very quickly absorbed in her letter-writing, she did not notice the heavy footsteps which presently sounded across the floor and paused at her chair.

“Now that there writin’—­” said a gruff voice at her shoulder; and, startled, she quickly turned in her chair, to find the other boarder, “the Doc,” leaning on the back of it, his shaggy head almost on a level with her fair one.

“That there writin’,” pursued the doctor, continuing to hold his fat head in unabashed proximity to her own and to her letter, “is wonderful easy to read.  Wonderful easy.”

Miss Margaret promptly covered her letter with a blotter, corked the raspberry-ade, and rose.

“Done a’ready?” asked the doctor.

“For the present, yes.”

“See here oncet, Teacher!”

He suddenly fixed her with his small, keen eyes as he drew from the pocket of his shabby, dusty coat a long, legal-looking paper.

“I have here,” he said impressively, “an important dokiment, Teacher, concerning of which I desire to consult you perfessionally.”

“Yes?”

“You just stay settin’; I’ll fetch a chair and set aside of you and show it to you oncet.”

He drew a chair up to the table and Margaret reluctantly sat down, feeling annoyed and disappointed at this interruption of her letter, yet unwilling, in the goodness of her heart, to snub the little man.

The doctor bent near to her and spoke confidentially.

“You see, them swanged fools in the legislature has went to work and passed a act—­ag’in’ my protest, mind you—­compellin’ doctors to fill out blanks answerin’ to a lot of darn-fool questions ’bout one thing and ’nother, like this here.”

He had spread open on the table the paper he had drawn from his pocket.  It was soiled from contact with his coat and his hands, and Margaret, instead of touching the sheet, pressed it down with the handle of her pen.

The doctor noticed the act and laughed.  “You’re wonderful easy kreistled [disgusted]; ain’t?  I took notice a’ready how when things is some dirty they kreistle you, still.  But indeed, Teacher,” he gravely added, “it ain’t healthy to wash so much and keep so clean as what you do.  It’s weakenin’.  That’s why city folks ain’t so hearty—­they get right into them big, long tubs they have built in their houses up-stairs!  I seen one oncet in at Doc Hess’s in Lancaster.  I says to him when I seen it, ’You wouldn’t get me into that—­it’s too much like a coffin!’ I says.  ‘It would make a body creepy to get in there.’  And he says, ’I’d feel creepy if I didn’t get in.’  ‘Yes,’ I says,’that’s why you’re so thin.  You wash yourself away,’ I says.”

“What’s it all about?” Miss Margaret abruptly asked, examining the paper.

“These here’s the questions,” answered the doctor, tracing them with his thick, dirty forefinger; “and these here’s the blank spaces fur to write the answers into.  Now you can write better ’n me, Teacher; and if you’ll just take and write in the answers fur me, why, I’ll do a favor fur you some time if ever you ast it off of me.  And if ever you need a doctor, just you call on me, and I’m swanged if I charge you a cent!”